


Cartography

by BloodyJinxii



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Art, M/M, Maps, Modelling, Wanderlust, probably purple prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 05:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15902001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyJinxii/pseuds/BloodyJinxii
Summary: In elementary school, Goro was asked to create a map of all the places he'd been.Years later, he created another.





	Cartography

When Goro was in elementary school, and their class was learning geography, the teacher had them place pins on a map with every place in Japan they had been.

Most stayed in the same general area of their small town in Gifu, but Goro’s red pushpins were everywhere. From his birthplace in Chiba, to the family that fostered him in Hokkaido and gave him up just as he was adapting to the cold, to his previous home in Nara, he’d travelled all over the country, from household to household. News had spread so fast about the cursed child who killed his mother, who summoned discord into households, who studied everyone with an angry glare, that he had been forced and shoved around, never having a place to truly call home.

Yusuke, on the other hand, he knew, had never left Tokyo. He was born in that shack in the city, and he grew up there, sheltered from everyone else. He’d never seen glistening crater lakes in Aomori, or the remnants of Hiroshima, or the hot springs up in the mountains.

_(Then again, Goro really hadn’t experienced them either, only glanced over the top of the fence when he was still too young to fully understand the meaning of privacy.)_

Tokyo, even still, made Goro feel restless. When he had found Shido, he knew that this would be his final resting place. And still, the bustle of the city made him anxious, the food here always a little too perfect, the people a little too put together and polished. And while this was the longest he had stayed in one place, it would never be a home.

He never knew why Yusuke considered this city a home either.

_(Recovery was difficult. What do you do when you force yourself into the position of soldier, only to fail your mission and return to civilian life with all your achievements, your accomplishments turning to ash as they slipped through your fingers?)_

There would be no more moving. Not for the forseeable future. As part of his rehabilitation, he was to stay in Tokyo, reporting to Sae every week, going to mandatory therapy, abiding a restraining order the Sakuras had discreetly put into place, evicting him from the closest place he had to a home.

He ended up biding his time taking classes online in a one room apartment he was able to afford thanks to working part time at a convenience store only a couple blocks away. Living paycheck to paycheck, the seasons and faces blending together, until one decided to return to clarity.

“I need your help,” Yusuke had asked.

It took Goro a moment to gather his thoughts and speak. “...What are you even doing here...?”

So the artist explained. He wanted to visit a park, a popular one at that, but he had no idea how to get there. Say, you visited popular spots before, would you happen to know?

_(And Goro did know, and he was still unsure why he didn’t lie and return to his fortress of solitude.)_

And so off the two went, Yusuke in his bizarrely striped shirt, Goro in a hoodie and old pair of jeans, to chase the inspiration he desperately sought for.

The amusement park was old and dull, mostly filled with kiddie rides that badly needed a new coat of paint, and adults with no better ideas on how to entertain their snot-nosed children. And still, Yusuke had taken it in hungrily, parking himself on a bench and beginning to sketch.

The afternoon continued like that, with him always finding new places to inspect and take apart, not even experiencing, just...observing.

It was hopelessly _boring_.

Still, for a reason he didn’t quite understand yet, he stayed with him the whole afternoon, until the sun began to set and the lights began to flicker on. Despite Yusuke’s longing stares towards the old lanterns, he allowed Goro to take them out of the park and on the next train back home, though he forced him to keep a sketch, a careful drawing of the carousel.

After he hung the drawing up, that should have been the end of it. A good deed done, and he could now return to his life without the need for companionship.

But it wasn’t.

Just as he had settled back into some form of normalcy, Yusuke knocked on his door again.

He wanted to see a zoo.

Then an aquarium.

Then a nature park.

_(And then, and then, and then…)_

Goro began to accept it. At least once a week, that annoying artist would bang on his door and demand to be taken to some mundane place, where they would spend hours wandering and stopping so Yusuke could draw yet another scratched fenced or abnormal branch.

It was irritating.

In a burst of overflowing annoyance, he finally asked.

“Why?”

“Why do you insist on drawing something so boring?”

_(“Why do you insist on having me take you?”)_

_(“Why did you even come find my apartment in the first place?”)_

Yusuke stood up from where he had been kneeling on the dirt path and brushed off his knees.

“It’s not boring,” he claimed. “There’s beauty everywhere. Each scratch or scrape tells a story.”

And he left it at that.

After he had returned to his drawing, Goro bent down and tried to see through Yusuke’s eyes.

It was a swingset. A wooden swingset with a large gash on the inner side. Simple. Easy.

Boring.

 _A story…_ he thought, studying the swings. The chain was worn a foot or two above the seat, from small, grimy hands, and the top links slid against each other too easily, but still held steady.

And he could see.

A child, maybe a little too reckless, trying to impress his friends as he twisted the swing at its apex, the angle suddenly too wide as his foot slammed into the wood. There would be pain, maybe blood, definitely bruising. And there would be a mother to dry those tears, to clean his wound, and to scold him for putting himself in danger.

He sat on the swing and slowly swayed back and forth. _I hope that boy is okay…_

_(Maybe he wouldn’t be. Maybe he was like him, a cursed child, his punishment an untreated and festering sore on his foot.)_

When he returned home, he stared at the assortment of drawings on his wall, souvenirs from places he’d been dragging, mentally kicking and screaming the whole way.

Maybe...it was time for a change.

_(Yusuke was more than a little surprised when Goro showed at the door with his own notebook and pencil, but he said nothing, knowing that birds often startle at the slightest of noise.)_

Drawing was difficult, and he often strained to see things the same way as Yusuke did, often scribbling and erasing, or tearing out pages.

“I’m not built for this,” he decided.

Yusuke took Goro’s hands, still working off calluses, in his ones with slender, long fingers, often with dried paint trapped beneath fingernails.

“No,” he said. “You have hands and fingers and eyes...you can draw.”

Still, as summer shade turned into brilliant reds, oranges, and golds, they both sensed the growing frustration, and their destination became different.

Yusuke’s dorm was covered in paintings and sketches, just like Goro had imagined. He recognized familiar sights and small details, some blown up and turned into color still lifes. His futon was neatly folded in one corner, and in the center sat an empty stool.

_(He should have guessed Yusuke wanted him to model for him someday, and to his surprise, his stomach no longer churned at the thought of saying yes.)_

Yusuke traced over every wrinkle in his clothing, every flyaway in his hair, every freckle he used to hide under caked on foundation. They grew bolder and more experimental, and now the scars on his back, from fighting shadows and people became subjects that told their own stories, of fear and triumph, rebellion and complacency. Stories he felt Yusuke had heard a thousand variations of, but still he listened intently with his charcoal pencil.

_(And when he kissed him, he felt like he had been hit by lightning, a pleasant, tingling burn filling his body.)_

The city was much bigger than he thought, than he remembered, as they explored each area like it was brand new, telling their stories through black and white, stippling and crosshatching.

He had a new map of Tokyo, of Japan, one that was unorthodox and unconventional, covering the back wall of his apartment. Fish swam next to the plaster facades of run down restaurants, stray dogs wandering by neon lights and small wildflowers sprouting through the cracks of the concrete. And at the heart of it all, was Yusuke, calm and collected, beautiful and wise beyond his years.

And there, Goro knew he was home.

**Author's Note:**

> And this is why you should never let me try to write artistic fic.


End file.
